No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.